We walk several miles north to Elvis Presley Boulevard and the Westgate Hotel. I have a heavy backpack on with water and bananas and clothes. My basic black dress over jeans and white Nikes with maroon swoops. Your knees are sleeved and cannot take too much but you don't complain. It feels right to arrive a little road weary. Like our little pilgrimage to the King. Along the way a Buddhist came up to us and pushed a jade bracelet around my wrist before I knew what was happening. She flashed us a generous smile. You dug out twenty bucks and she placed two necklaces around our necks with emerald seated Buddhas hanging off of beaded chains. She did not speak any English and it didn't matter. We offered thanks and loving embraces.
"It's going to be the longest drive from your house to mine tonight," he tells me. "I'm going to hate it." It's 5am and your thoughts already have you twelve hours ahead. We haven't even checked out of Room #2342 in the Horseshoe Hotel. You watch the morning news while I swallow my vitamins and meds with coffee and perform my rituals.
The Westgate still has the original clamshell billboard where they used to post lettering announcing his residency. That was back when it was the Las Vegas Hilton and the International. The first thing you see coming in the lobby is memorabilia. His first ever pistol alongside his favorite gun, a .357 which he kept holstered and brought with him, on and off stage. A menu of all the groceries he ordered two weeks at a time. Lots of porterhouse steaks and pot roasts and filets. Five whole chickens. Tomatoes and veggies and onions and bread. A pair of his black boots and photos of him, on and off stage. The sheriff badge he got when he was deputized. A gold watch and his stripes from the Army. A few of his favorite belt buckles.
We only had one major fight the whole five days and it was the day we lost one another on the Strip for two hours. "It was because we were apart," you say. I love the way you frame it and name it. I love you so much. Who knows how many more years we can travel here together on holiday. I have faith it will be many more but life can be unpredictable and you never know. Bunny and Mousey are almost twelve years old.
The hotel holds the old world charm. The lobby ceiling is low with recessed lighting and there are chandeliers by the bar and lots of frosted glass and redwood. Big black and white prints of Tom Jones and Bobby Darrin and Wayne Newton and Elvis, and many others who performed here years ago. There is an inscription that shows how many shows Elvis performed in a decade, and every show was sold out. He gave his all to this place and the people who came to see their beloved hero. We walk around looking at all the images carefully like we are in a museum. A lady approaches me and warns me not to go into that room. They are selling timeshares.
You could call something tragic but you don't have to see it that way. All of us are born to expire. Our lives and bodies are like land leases or timeshares, too. The King lived the most spectacular life! Just like the Buddha before him. It doesn't have to be tragic. I offer you something, too, after all you have given me. Not just a hundred dollars of the seven hundred I won this week betting on the NFL ... I also give you faith over fear. The nine miles distance between our two homes is nothing! Distance cannot stand between us. We are always together, like magic.
Katya Mills, 12.26.2024
